Mentor Graphics

About Mentor Graphics

Mentor Graphics knows that everyone sometimes needs a helping hand, even engineers. The company is a leading global developer of electronic design automation (EDA) software and systems used by engineers to design, simulate, and test electronic components, such as integrated circuits (IC's), wire harness systems, and printed circuit boards (PCBs). Products – more...include PADS (PCB design), Nucleus (operating system), and Calibre (IC design). Its software is used to design components for such products as computers and wireless handsets. Clients come from such industries as aerospace, IT, and telecommunications. Mentor Graphics gets more than half of its revenues from Europe and the Asia/Pacific region, particularly Japan.

In fiscal 2012 Mentor Graphic's revenue crested the $1 billion dollar mark for the first time. Sales of software and related systems, which account for more than 60% of sales, enjoyed a jump of 12% for the year compared with 2011, thanks mainly to large contract renewals, as well as an increase in smaller sales. Sales of services and technical support also grew 9% on strong demand. The company's top ten clients accounted for 45% of its business in 2012.

Despite higher operating expenses in 2012, particularly in the areas of sales, marketing, and research and development, Mentor Graphics enjoyed profit growth of about 300% for the year by keeping other costs down.

Mentor Graphics sees the development of new EDA applications as key to maintaining market share, and like many competitors in the market, the company is aggressive on the acquisition front, buying smaller companies for both the technology they've developed and for their engineering staff and expertise.

In 2010 the company purchased Valor Computerized Systems, an Israel-based provider of productivity improvement software for printed circuit board manufacturers and distributors. Also that year it acquired the Virtual Garage product line from Freescale. Virtual Garage is used in designing automotive electrical and electronic systems, and Mentor Graphics saw it as complementary technology to its CHS software for electrical systems design and wire harness engineering.

The company additionally bought California-based software developer CodeSourcery in 2010 to strengthen its open source systems development holdings. CodeSourcery specialized in tools designed to help embedded software developers create open source applications for use in consumer electronics such as cell phones. – less